Chapter III

Observe, then, the structures which he compares are altogether different; one being _square_, and the other round. Nor, in the whole _compass_ of _possible analogies_, is there a single feature in which the two _classes_ of edifices could be _said_ to correspond, but that they both have their doors--which, by the way, are different in their form--at a distance from the ground. The _Pyramids_ of Egypt bear the same correspondence,--their entrance being one-third of the height from the surface,--and why does not the Colonel bestow _them_ also upon the monks? No; those poor, denuded, inoffensive, exemplary, _unearthly_ victims of maceration were incapable of, either the masonic acme, or--at the era which Montmorency particularises--of the corporate influence and pecuniary or equivalent supplies indispensable for the erection of either “pyramid” or “tower”;--contenting themselves rather with their _lowly cells_, whence they issued out, at all seasons, to diffuse the word of “life,” than in raising _maypoles_ of stone, within which to garrison their _inexpressible_ treasures.

But to reconcile this discrepancy in exterior outfit, he has recourse to a miracle, which he thus conjures up. “Doubtless, in the _beginning_, when first those Cœnobites settled in the desert, the convent-tower was round;” then, by a single word, _præsto_,--or “doubtless,”--right-about face, takes place a metamorphosis, from round to square!--the more miraculous, in that the _former round_ ones left behind them no vestiges! Upon which, again, a counter miracle is effected: “The square ones having subsequently fallen into disuse, the round tower, in after ages,” he says, “appears to have acquired a degree of increased celebrity, especially in _Europe_, during the preponderance of the feudal system, when every baronial castle in Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, etc., was furnished with one or more.” Now, has he not before told us, and told us _truly, by chance_, that the Pillar Tower _scorns_ all kind of affinity with those “_barbarians_”; whereupon I shall merely observe with the poet, that

“If people contradict themselves, can _I_
Help contradicting them?”[54]

But, if intended as a place of shelter for either _person_ or _property_, why build them of such an altitude? Above all things, why not build them of such internal capacity as to accommodate the _whole_ number of inmates in each convent, in case of an attack,--as, in fact, those _square_ towers in the desert used; whereas, “a _dozen bulky persons_” could not squeeze together into one of our Round Towers; and accordingly, with the inconsistency inseparable from error, our author himself proclaims that “it has frequently occurred that the _barbarian_, on finding that he had been foiled in his search after treasures, though he burned the abbey, and perpetrated all the mischief he was able, sooner than retire empty-handed, the _pirate_ seized on the abbot, or most prominent member he found belonging to the community, and hurried away the unfortunate individual on board his ship, holding him in durance, till, overcome by ill-usage, he besought his brethren to come to his relief with a heavy ransom for his freedom.” “It has also often happened,” he adds, “that, unable to comply with the tyrant’s exorbitant demands, the monks resigned the captive to his fate.”

Surely, if they had those _keeps_ to fly to, the “unfortunate” abbot need not allow himself to be seized at all; and surely, also, if they had all those treasures upon which the Colonel insists, they would not leave the father of their “community” unredeemed from so excruciating a degradation. And hence we may conclude with Dr. Lanigan, “What little credit is due to the stories of some hagiologists, who talk of great estates granted to our monasteries and churches in those and even earlier times.”[55] Indeed, for the two first centuries subsequent to the arrival of St. Patrick, such a thing was incompatible with the nature of the “political compact” in Ireland.

I do not deny, however, but that the ecclesiastics of this time did possess some articles of value appertaining to the altar, and that these were objects of unholy cupidity to the Danes: nay, further, I admit that, to escape from the insatiability of those virulent marauders, they used to fly to the belfries, which--from that mistaken regard attached to the edifices, as these receptacles of those sonorous organs to which superstition has ever clung[56]--they had hoped would prove an asylum from their pursuits,--but in vain--neither religion nor superstition opposed a barrier to the Northmen, while the frail materials whereof those belfries were constructed afforded a ready gratification to their appetite for destruction.

_The Ulster Annals_, year 949, furnish us with the following fact:--“Cloicteach Slane do loscadh do Gall Athacliath. Bacall ind Erlamha, 7 cloc badec do cloccaibh, Caenechair Ferleghinn, 7 sochaide mor inbi do loscadh.” That is, the belfry at Slane was set fire to by the foreigners (the Danes) of Dublin. The pastor’s staff or crozier, adorned with precious stones, besides the principal _bells_, and Canecar the lecturer, with a _multitude_ of other persons were burned in the flames. _The Annals of the Four Masters_, noticing the same event, use nearly similar words: “Cloicteach Slaine do loscadh can a lan do mhionnaibh 7 deghdh aoninibh, im Chæinechair Fearleighinn Slaine, Bachall an Eramha 7 _clocc_ ba deach do chloccaibh.” That is, The belfry at Slane was _burned to the ground_, along with several articles of value which were therein, and _numbers_ of _individuals_, besides the Slane prælector, the patron’s staff, and all the bells, which were there of _most_ worth.

Now take notice that within those “belfries” a “_multitude_ of persons” used to have been collected, whereas the Round Towers could not accommodate above “a dozen” at one time. The belfries also are represented to have been reduced to ashes by the conflagration, which accords with the description given by both Ware and Colgan, of the _wooden_ substance whereof they were composed; whereas the Round Towers are made of _stone_, and cemented by a bond of such indurated tenacity, that nothing short of lightning or earthquake has been known to disturb them:--and even though other violence may succeed in their overthrow, yet could it not be said with any accuracy that they were reduced by _fire_ to cinders. But, above all, those very Annals which I have above quoted, when recording a greater and national calamity, place the belfries and the Round Towers in the same sentence, _contradistinguished_ from one another,--the former characterised by their appropriate name of _Cloicteach_, as exhibited before, and the latter under the still more apposite denomination of _Fidhnemeadh_, as we shall explain elsewhere.

Again, if designed as fortresses for the monks, and receptacles for their riches, is it not strange that in the isle of Hy,--which was literally a nest of ecclesiastics, and which Columb Kill himself evangelised at the time when Montmorency was--in a _dream_--employing him and his coadjutors at the erection of the Round Towers,--is it not strange, I say, that this little isle, the most defenceless, as it is, and forlorn of all lands that ever projected above the bosom of the sea, should yet, in the allotment of monastic artillery, be left totally destitute of an _aërial_ garrison?

And yet, notwithstanding the absence of such defences, the monks still continued to make it their favourite abode; of which we have but too cogent an evidence in the record of the Four Masters, under the year 985, stating that the abbot and fifteen of his brethren were slain by the Northmen on Christmas Day, just as they were preparing to celebrate the nativity of their Redeemer.

But those monks spread themselves, in _shoals_, over England also; and we know that _that_ country was even more infested than our own with both Northmen and Danes. Is it not astonishing, therefore, that the English convents were not protected against the sacrilege of those savages by telescopic steeples of _Babylonish cement_?

This, it may be said, is applying a steam-engine to crush a flapwing; yet, as that flapwing has been somewhat troublesome, and has contrived to blindfold some searchers after antiquarian _truth_, I may be excused if, to frustrate any efforts at impotent revivals, I shall continue decapitating the hydra, until he disappears in his own sinuosities.

He tells us, then, with all the calculation of an engineer and the gravity of a physician, that a stone let fall from the top of one of those towers would crush the “barbarian” to atoms. True, it would, and the _civilian_ also. A little pebble let fall from an eagle’s beak, as he cuts his aërial passage through the cloudy regions, or soars aloft into the empyreal of interminable space, would have a similar effect; but it would puzzle the shrewdest engineer in Christendom to place a ballast-man, with a big stone on his lap, on either the top or the sloping sides of the conical “caubeen” which graces the summit of our careering cylinders. This, to use the Colonel’s own words, “will be admitted to be contrary to all that is admissible in the rules of architectural proportions.”

Next remark that the Colonel keeps those 150 “volunteers” at work upon the Round Towers in the midst of a raging war;--after he had before affirmed that they could only be erected in a season of profound peace--for a complete century. During this whole time they must, of course, have availed themselves of the assistance of the inhabitants; and is it not marvellous that, during that long time “the ancient Irishman”--and “Pat’s nae stupid fellow,” as the Colonel himself avows--should not have been able to pick up a single insight into the arcana of the masonic art?--but that soon as ever the dear externs expired,--who at the period of their arrival must have been, at least, over twenty years of age each, and who, to accomplish Montmorency’s miracle, must have every one of them lived just one hundred years more, and then died, all in one day!--is it not _petrifying_, I say, that soon as ever this appalling catastrophe occurred, every vestige of those “fairy” masons should have vanished along with them?--and the country, in a _paralysis_, have forgotten to associate them with the Towers, as if stupefied with the incantation of a wizard or a talisman!

And yet this was not the greatest injustice of which the poor Cœnobites got reason to complain; but it _is_ that, when the people had recovered from the delirium of their late trance, and began to look abroad for some “authors” on whom to _father_ those edifices, they unanimously, though unaccountably, agreed to lay them at the door of the “O’Rorkes” and the “MacCarthy Mores”!

It so happens that the last of the MacCarthy Mores was my _own_ maternal grandfather; and he, venerable and venerated old gentleman, apt as he was, in the evening of his faded life, to revert to the mutability of worldly possessions, never for a moment bestowed a solitary thought upon the alienation of the property of those columnar masonries. Often used he to mention the Castles of Palace and of Blarney: Castlemain and Glenflesk used still oftener to grace his talk; but oftener still, and with more apparent delectation, would he dilate on the _Castle_ of Macroom and the _Abbey_ of Mucruss,--all, as the creation of _immediate_ or _collateral_ branches of his family; but never, in the catalogue of his patrimonial spoliations did he enumerate a Round Tower, or lay a shadow of claim to their construction.

To the point, however.--The great miracle after all is, that after the decease of those “fairy” masters, no one of their native helpmates could be found able to join together with mechanical skill two pieces of hewn stone with the intermediate amalgam of adhesive mortar! The thing is so absurd as to make the Colonel himself in his honesty to exclaim, “Is this simple process that mighty piece of necromancy which, according to some authors” (forgetting that he was one of those himself), “that _lively_ people were unable to comprehend?” It is amusing to see how encomiastic and commendatory he is of the “Hibernians” when it answers his views; and how vituperative and condemnatory when it is equally to his purpose.

The last assumption of this writer, and which I have purposely reserved until now is an affected parallel of the Irish Culdees with the Egyptian Cophtes. “Their great piety, austerity, and hospitality announce,” he says, “the existence of one kind of discipline and of kindred religions between the Cophtes and the Irish Cœnobites.” That is, because they are both _pious_, _austere_, and _hospitable_, they must both necessarily correspond in _religious opinions_ and in _Church forms_! The Indian Brahmins, say I, are also _pious_, _austere_, and _hospitable_; and why are they not incorporated in this holy identification? No, Colonel, it will not do; I see what you are at. You want to insinuate our obligation to the Greeks for the blessings of the Gospel. A false zeal for mental emancipation--subsequent to the dislodgment of spiritual encroachment--has forced into mushroom existence this spurious abortion. Aloof from the thraldom of Roman or other yoke, the Irish, within themselves, cultivated the principles of the Christian verity; but it is, in the extreme, erroneous to say that they derived their _faith_ in that verity through emissaries of the Grecian Church, from whom they differed as substantially as light does from darkness.

I think it very probable indeed that the glad tidings of revelation were first imparted to Ireland by the lips of St. Paul himself.[57] We have the names of many Christians existing amongst us before the arrival of either Pelagius or Patrick. The very terms of the commission, which Pope Celestine gave to the _former_, being addressed “ad Scotos in Christum credentes,” to the _Irish who believe in Christ_,--prove the good seed had been laid in the soil before _his_ pontificate. The nation, however, was yet too much immersed in its old idolatries--and the fascinations of their former creed had so spellbound the inhabitants as a community--that those who singled themselves out as converts to the new faith were obliged, from persecution, to betake themselves to other countries. And yet _this_ is the moment when paganism was omnipotent throughout this island, that Colonel de Montmorency has the modesty to tell us that the “Round Towers” were erected as magazines for the monks!

To the _Patrician Apostle_, the beloved patriarch of Ireland, was reserved the glory of maturing the fruit which his predecessors had planted. His constitutional zeal and absorbing devotion in the service of his Creator were but the secondary qualifications which pre-eminently marked him out for so hazardous an enterprise. The primary and grand facility which this _true hero_ possessed for the attainment of his great design, was his intimate converse with the manners and language of the natives,--obtained during his captivity not long before,--which, making way at once to the _hearts_ of his auditory, was an irresistible passport to their heads and their understandings.

In the sequel of this volume it will be fully shown, that when St. Patrick entered upon his prescribed task,--towards the close of the fifth century,--the monarch and his court were celebrating their pagan festival, or preparing for it, on the hill of Tara. Can a nation be called Christian where the sovereign and court are pagan? Or will a few exceptions from the mass of the population be indulged with fortresses of imperishable architecture, while the nation at large took shelter within _wattles_ and walls of clay?--and that, too, at a moment when Christianity was considered a name of reproach, and its few solitary abettors constrained to exile or to degradation!

No sooner, however, were the simplicities of Christianity expounded to the natives through the medium of their native tongue, than the refined organism of the Irish constitution, habituated by discipline to sublime pursuits, took fire from the blaze of the sacred scintilla, and enlisted them as its heralds, not only at home but throughout Europe.

Precisely at this instant it was that all the _ancient_ names of places in the island--recorded by Ptolemy from other foreign geographers--were changed and new-modelled; the converts--“_ut in nova deditione_”--not thinking it sufficient to abandon the forms of their previous belief, and adopt the more pure one, if they did not obliterate every vestige of nominal association which could tend to recall their fancies to the religion which they relinquished. Accordingly, from the names of Juernis, Macollicon, Rhigia, Nagnata, Rheba, etc., sprang up the names of Killkenny, Killmalloch, and the thousand other names, commencing with “Kill,” to be met with in every district and subdivision throughout the country.

Every corner was now the scene of Christian zeal; and every neophyte strove to surpass his neighbour in evincing devotion to the newly-revealed religion. “Kills,” or little churches,--from the Latin _cella_, now for the first time introduced,--were built in the vicinity of every spot which had before been the theatre of pagan adoration--whether as cromleachs, as Mithratic caves, or as Round Towers. These were the memorials of _three distinct species_ of paganism, and were, therefore, now singled out as appropriate sites for the erection of Christian “Kills,” the ruins of which are still to be traced, contiguous to _each_ of those idolatrous reminiscences,--disputing with the false divinities the very ground of their worship, and diverting the zeal of the worshippers from the creature to the Creator.

Nay, to such a pitch did the crusaders, in their conflict, carry the principle of their enthusiasm, that many of them adopted the names of their late idols, and intertwined _those_ again--now Christianly appropriated--with the _old_ favourite denominations of many of the localities. For instance, St. Shannon assumed _that_ name from the _river_ Shannon, which was an object of deification some time before; and St. Malloch adopted _this_ name from the city of Malloch, that is, the Sun, or Apollo,--the supreme idol of pagan Ireland’s adoration,--from which again, with the prefix “Kill,” he made the name Kill-_malloch_,--the latter alone having been the ancient name of the place, converted by Ptolemy into “Macollicon”; which is only giving his Greek termination, _icon_, to the Irish word _Malloch_, and transposing, for sound’s sake, the two middle syllables.

Chaildee was the pious but appropriate epithet by which those patriarchs of Christianity thought fit to distinguish themselves. The word means _associate of God_. Having obtained the gospel from the see of Rome, they adhered implicitly--yet without conceding any _superiority_--to the Roman connection--agreeing in all the grand essentials of vital belief, and differing only as to some minor points of ecclesiastical discipline.

This variance, however, has afforded handle to some lovers of controversial doubt to maintain that Ireland was never beholden to Rome for the gospel. The fallacy is disproved by the fact of all our early neophytes betaking themselves, for perfection in the mysteries of revelation, to the Roman capital. On one of which occasions it was that Montmorency himself brought over his hundred and fifty volunteers, to accompany back one of those converted students, who had gone there to learn the very minuteness of the doctrine which the Romans inculcated.

It was not, remember, for ordinary or secular education that they betook themselves to Rome. The academies of Ireland far surpassed it in splendour. It was solely and exclusively to learn the particulars of their faith; and having once obtained this insight, they continued in spiritual unison with the tenets of that Church, as to all fundamental points of doctrine; never surrendering, however, the independence of their judgment, nor bowing before the “_ipse dixit_” of any tribunal,--where _reason_ was to be the guide,--until forced by the conspiracy of Pope Adrian IV. and his countryman Henry II.

How contemptible, therefore, is the effort, in the teeth of this exposure, to identify the Irish Chaildees with the Egyptian Cophtes! There was no one point in which they may be compared, except their mutual _poverty_; which, however, Montmorency overlooks, or rather contradicts, making them both wealthy, and have _banks_ even for their riches. As, however, I look upon Dr. Hurd[58] as somewhat a better authority, you shall have what he says upon the subject--

“Among the Ethiopians, there are still to be found some monks, called Coptics, who first flourished in Egypt, but, by no difficult sort of gradation, made their way into Ethiopia. They profess the utmost _contempt_ for all _worldly things_, and look upon themselves as a sort of terrestrial angels. They are obliged to _part with all their possessions before they can enter upon a monastic life_.”

Their discrepancy in doctrine is even still more notorious, agreeing with the Chaildees only in a _single_ instance also; namely, in _both_ denying the supremacy of the Pope. Here are the Doctor’s words: “They deny the papal supremacy, and, indeed, _most parts_ of the popish doctrine, particularly transubstantiation, purgatory, _auricular confession_, _celibacy_ of the _clergy_, and _extreme unction_;” all which, save the first, the Irish Chaildees maintained in _common with the see of Rome_.

And now, on the point of education, I will content myself with Montmorency’s own testimony, which is to this effect, viz.: “Only on the score of erudition it must be acknowledged that the _Irish theologian_, as history asserts, did not only _excel_ the modern Greek and Egyptian, but his profound acquaintance with the _sciences_, _arts_, and _laws of his country_, gave him an _unrivalled superiority_ in the _literary_ and civilised world.”

What, Colonel! are those the “barbarians”? Is _this_ what you mean by not being _conveniently situated_ within the _enlightened_ and _enlivening_ influence of Greek and Roman refinement? Alas! you knew but little of the real statement of the case; whilst the illustrious Fenelon, himself a descendant of this boasted Rome, thus more accurately avows, “that, notwithstanding all the _pretended politeness_ of the Greeks and Romans, yet, as to moral virtue and religious obligations, they were no better than the savages of America.”

I have been thus hurried on by the train of my thoughts, without observing much of order or methodical arrangement. As my object is, however, the elucidation of truth,--not idle display, or vainglorious exhibition,--I am sure my readers will scarce murmur at the course by which I shall have led them to that end; in a question, moreover, where so many adventurers have so miserably miscarried.

So much the rather, thou celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate. There plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.[59]